Outside of Practice

Belive it or not, despite around 25 hours per week of practice, the Blue Band does things outside of practice!  And not just recruitment events, either.  Sometimes we do some things for fun!

Some of these things we do during the season.  One example was my first post, the rookie cake bake.  Although it wasn't voluntary, it was still bonding, no matter how painful of an experience it was.

Other things we do throughout the season are voluntary.  One of these was the Mt. Nittany hike.  One Sunday afternoon a good chunk of the Blue Band (I'm talking 150+ people) decided it would be fun to hike up the side of a mountain all at the same time.  Grant it, this idea was much better on paper, but it was still a fun experience!  Plus, we got some amazing pictures out of it.

Another thing we do is Mr. Blue Band.  As the name suggests, Mr. Blue Band is a pageant-esque event in which the nominated men of the Blue Band answer questions and perform a talent.  Of course no scholarship money is awarded to the participants, but they do get the unmatched honor of being named Mr. Blue Band for an entire calendar year.

We also do some things outside of the season, too!  Although we are knee-deep in formal season for Greek life, the Blue Band has a formal too!  It's at different times every year since the vice president is the one who plans it, and this year it was the first Friday of the second semester.  It was pretty cold, but hundreds of members made the trek to Beaver Stadium, where our formal was.  Being in Beaver Stadium in anything but our uniforms was a nice change of pace.

You can think of Blue Band formal as like...awkward middle school dance but with fancy hors d'oeuvres and people are dressed nicely rather than Abercrombie and Fitch shirts and straightener-seared hair.  Of course we snapped some great pictures of ourselves

Some not so great pictures of ourselves

And of course, what's a formal without sucking in as much air as possible in the bathroom and pretending you're pregnant?

And here's a picture of me with my hot date

The best part of formal was definitely the toothpicks in the finger foods that had flags of different countries on them.

Another thing we have is an annual banquet!  My high school did this, but I didn't really think it was a thing outside of that.  But, I couldn't be more wrong!

The banquet was held at the Nittany Lion Inn, which, for those who don't know, is essentially an overrated (albeit very nice) hotel on the very west edge of campus.  It was nice to have an excuse to dress up one fine Sunday afternoon (which just happened to be Superbowl Sunday) and have a nice break from dining hall food for once.  Plus, Von Walker spoke!

Photo credit to Olivia Dowd

At the end of the day, it was great to see so many people that I hadn't seen since the season and celebrate how awesome we are before rushing off to various apartments to eat wings and scream at the Patriots and Falcons and wait for the new Star Wars movie commercial.

Blue Band is a great place to meet some of your best friends in college!  Not only do we suffer through intensely hot practices and frigid cold games, but we climb up mountains and eat cheeses with flags in them.